The flooding in Montreal, which is centered on a group of islands at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers, began when waters breached dikes in the northern part of the city. The authorities declared a state of emergency in Montreal and other affected areas.

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Residents placed sandbags outside a home in a flooded residential area in Gatineau, north of Ottawa.Credit
Chris Wattie/Reuters

Unusually high rainfall in recent weeks has engorged the dams, reservoirs and rivers meant to handle the annual flood season, pushing Lake Ontario to a water level not seen since 1993, the Canadian Press news agency said.

Montreal’s mayor, Denis Coderre, called the flooding a “historic situation” and “a first for our metropolis.” But the city has been prone to occasional flooding during the spring thaw since before Jacques Cartier found an indigenous population occupying the land in the early 1500s. In 1643, the city’s founder, Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, erected the first cross on Mont Royal, the triple-peaked hill that gives the modern city its name, to thank God for saving the fledgling colony from a flood.